I often feel the urge to write down my memories. Often, yet I find myself resisting words, as if memories could not be contained in them. When I do, I always feel like I’m losing, losing, losing. What exactly? I could not tell you; it’s difficult to grasp, and yet, here I am again, trying to find the past in my fingers as I type. What happened or what I remember, which I have come to realize are two very different things. Looking at old photographs has been my way in—into a world I was not a part of, but that I experienced through others as stories—making the act of looking something more like traveling. Returning.
I have vivid memories of La Argentina, the sugar mill that was bought by my father’s family in 1913, the second oldest in the area. Already active, the date marks the moment a new company was funded, its name a reference to the South American country. What was the original destination turned inspiration for a place imagined. And this image slowly began to take form, stemming from the sugar mill that was already in place to the building of offices, sleeping quarters turned houses, a shop (or a place to buy alcohol, at night a make-shift cinema), a dairy stand, followed by the community center, the church and the school—a project expanded, transformed into what was called “difference.”
The trip from our house was the shortest; the rest of the family traveled from the capital while we were already in the countryside of Alajuela. It was a half an hour difference (or so), and yet, it felt longer—further apart. Apart like our family car, an old thing with no functioning AC and whose windows barely rolled down. Dust-filled. Three children on the back, appeased by pillows. The driving was always fast, always abrupt and silent. This silence was so loud it made my skin crawl. Meanwhile, music played, like a soundtrack made for that specific chaos. We knew the reason my father drove this way: uncontrolled, destructive, even. As if he wanted to destroy what lay before him. We knew the reason for his torment and we knew it did not end when he exited the car.
I remember the big house where we would spend our Summers as children, the way the road broke down as we entered the main gate, after being greeted by one sitting inside its shed, hiding from the sun that poured all around him. The car would stop briefly. A simple “Oh” left the car, followed by the same utterance outside. This “Oh,” I would soon understand, was the single letter version of “hello,” a language broken in the same way the road had been broken. A physical effort, of bodies exhausted.
This language also signaled another crossing, a shift in perspective. To enter La Argentina was, after all, akin to traveling in time. It was a space that appeared to exist beyond the realms of the outside. A system inherited from colonial time and kept by the promise of “development,” of something better always on the horizon. In the end, it was development that tore it apart.
As we continued downhill I could feel my head buzzing, the rhythm of the holes playing alongside my father’s jazz CD, alongside his angry voice. Sunglasses on. In the dissonance of those sounds I became my anxious self. To ease myself, I took in my surroundings. From the corner of my eye I can still see what once was my uncle’s house to the left of the gate, downhill. This was the house he was given when he worked as manager of La Argentina, before the accident that took his life just a few kilometers away, after the party that kept him in San José and the early morning ahead, not having had one drink (or so I was told—so was I given the task to correct). He just fell asleep.
The same house in which his wife would live for years, even after his passing. I continue to be very intrigued by it, the house. Up a hill, to the left side of the road, its sight barely visible. A traditional Costa Rican house made of wood and painted white, or so I imagined it to be. I never went in, never tried to cross over. It was out of the question, I knew; no one had to tell me so. Like a deep silence, an open wound, the house was the reminder of a life lost too soon, an unnecessarily loss. Empty space. Today, the house is owned by a distant relative of my dad who received the house after the sugar mill seized its operations, leading to the partition of the land and the division of assets. A frivolous act of breaking, of erasing.
To the right side of the car is were the remains of the sugar mill lay today. Back then, I would have rolled my window down ever so slightly to be able to grasp it fully: capture the sweet smell of burnt melases and feel the humidity in my skin, while I listened attentively to the sounds of nature and machinery coming together. Above us, the crane stood tall, putting into question the hierarchies below or highlighting them rather, like a preamble. Located right next to the sugar mill, where it served its purpose, its monumental size made of it something of a monument. This brick-colored structure contrasted the nature around it, another type of monument and equally as important.
